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There are two pieces to this. First, past wars involved journalists directly embedded into forward units. If they said 7 rockets were fired into City X because

There are two pieces to this. First, past wars involved journalists directly embedded into forward units. If they said 7 rockets were fired into City X because they were present and witnessed it, then what they were reporting was correct. It doesn't require expertise in anything to correctly report that. The vetting was on the part of the news organizations themselves, not hiring war correspondents who were blatantly making things up. Now that everyone has access to publish their claims to directly witness something, there is no longer any sort of filter on whether they're even actually there. So if you're watching video taken by a professional reporter sent to a theater of combat by a reputable news organization, you can at least be reasonably sure they're not fabricating the video. If your source of videos is TikTok, you no longer have much in the way of assurance that what you're seeing is even real video footage. The second part is what you're talking about, whether the "expert" opinions of pundits writing in professional news outlets are any better at interpreting events than a layperson. This is much more of an open question.

renewiltord 5y ago
> So if you're watching video taken by a professional reporter sent to a theater of combat by a reputable news organization, you can at least be reasonably sure they're not fabricating the video. I agree with this, but specifically this. i.e. drop any of the nouns and adjectives in the first clause and the second clause changes. Professional journalists are reliable eyewitnesses and can be trusted to transmit their eyewitness expertise, factoring out any active conspiracy. They are not, however, skilled at obtaining facts except through witnessing, i.e. I trust their first-party accounts but not their third-party accounts. They are easily misled, but it can't be helped: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

renewiltord 5y ago

> So if you're watching video taken by a professional reporter sent to a theater of combat by a reputable news organization, you can at least be reasonably sure they're not fabricating the video. I agree with this, but specifically this. i.e. drop any of the nouns and adjectives in the first clause and the second clause changes. Professional journalists are reliable eyewitnesses and can be trusted to transmit their eyewitness expertise, factoring out any active conspiracy. They are not, however, skilled at obtaining facts except through witnessing, i.e. I trust their first-party accounts but not their third-party accounts. They are easily misled, but it can't be helped: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."